Microsoft says most Sidekick phone data recovered

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it has recovered most of the data feared lost by users of its Sidekick mobile phone, following a Microsoft server computer failure.

Data such as contacts, photos and calendar entries saved on the phones and remotely at Microsoft’s servers was originally thought to be destroyed, according to T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, the U.S. carrier for the handset.

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage,” Microsoft executive Roz Ho said in a statement.

Microsoft plans to begin restoring users’ personal data “as soon as possible,” the company said, adding it now thinks that only a minority of Sidekick users were hit by the data loss.

The problem was caused by a server failure that hurt Microsoft’s main and backup databases supporting Sidekick.

The glitch hit as technology companies are increasingly looking to convince customers to use remote storage services to back up their data, and at a time when Microsoft is fighting to gain ground in the market for smartphones.